Mathematics Education and Democracy Education

Overview & Synopsis

Democracy is a most accepted form of government system and has a great importance for citizens by allowing them equal and active participation in common life. As its development and characteristics are important for all citizens of a country, each democratic country puts much emphasis on democracy education in its educational curricula. In recent years, some developments about democracy education in national state school in Turkey have been seen and educational goals about teaching democracy have been developed by Ministry of National Education of Turkey. This study aims to show that educational goals of mathematics education are helpful for accomplishment of learning outcomes of democracy education. In the study, it is hypothesised that a well-educated individual having the qualities of mathematics education behaves in accordance with democracy. Based on this hypothesis, goals of mathematics education were determined and researched that students having educational outcomes of these goals also achieve the outcomes of democracy education without taking any formal course in schools. Therefore, a scale about the outcomes of mathematics and democracy education was developed and applied to university students in the department of mathematics education. Findings verified the hypothesis and showed that students having educational outcomes of mathematics education have the qualities of democracy education and can play important roles in positive development process of democracy.